The Shaughnessy Report: Leadership vs. Management

Is your manager one of the great ones, a true leader? Many of your colleagues would probably answer with a pointed “No.”

Or maybe you’re a manager. Many PCB designers have moved, sometimes reluctantly, into positions of project manager and CAD manager.

So which is it: Are you a leader, or just a manager?

Instead of covering a tech topic like signal integrity or DFM this month, we’re focusing on leadership, and what it means to be a leader and manager. This topic came about after seeing replies to our surveys over the last year or so.

In some of those reader surveys, we asked, “What is your biggest challenge?” Every time we posed that question, we received replies that I would paraphrase as, “Management doesn’t know what the hell they’re doing.” Some comments are much more colorful and emotional.

Let’s face it: A bad manager can make your job hell on earth.

Now, PCB designers are known to complain (I’m kidding, somewhat), but we also see this kind of comment from PCB fabricators, assembly providers, and suppliers. It turns out that a wide variety of technologists in this industry cast a jaundiced eye toward their management.

Naturally, we started this venture with another survey, this time to the subscribers of all three of our magazines; the results can be found on page of this issue. Open-ended questions often provide us with some of our best insights into our readers’ challenges, and this time was no exception.

Here is Question 1, followed by the top responses and the percentage of respondents who chose each.

What are the three most important traits and skill sets of a great leader today?

Ability to inspire others – 72.7%

Empowerment of employees – 47.7%

Integrity – 40.9%

Inspiration is the big winner here. Almost three-fourths of respondents want a leader who inspires them. They want to be inspired—they need to be inspired, or they’ll leave a job. That’s one of the most common points we hear regarding millennial staff.

To read this entire article, which appeared in the October 2016 issue of The PCB Design Magazine, click here.

Share

Cherie Litson, CID+, was one of the instructors at AltiumLive Munich. I asked her to discuss some of the topics she covered in her class, and what the future of PCB design will look like. How are we going to pass down all of this design knowledge to the next generation?

At AltiumLive, I met Carl Schattke, CID+, a lead PCB designer with an American automaker. Carl and TTM’s Julie Ellis taught a packed class on good stackup practices complete with plenty of slides showing examples of all kinds of stackups. After class, Carl explained why the stackup is often the root of manufacturing problems downstream, and why today’s discrete component shortages are likely to be around for quite some time.

At AltiumLive Munich, I met with Tobias Bobrzik, a Technical University of Munich student and member of the TUM Hyperloop team. In 2018, the TUM Hyperloop team’s prototype pod set the world speed record of 290 miles per hour, which lead to their meeting with Musk. Tobias designed some of the PCBs used in that vehicle, so I asked him to tell us more about this experience, and what he hopes to do after graduation.

Printer Version

The Shaughnessy Report: Leadership vs. Management

Is your manager one of the great ones, a true leader? Many of your colleagues would probably answer with a pointed “No.”

Or maybe you’re a manager. Many PCB designers have moved, sometimes reluctantly, into positions of project manager and CAD manager.

So which is it: Are you a leader, or just a manager?

Instead of covering a tech topic like signal integrity or DFM this month, we’re focusing on leadership, and what it means to be a leader and manager. This topic came about after seeing replies to our surveys over the last year or so.

In some of those reader surveys, we asked, “What is your biggest challenge?” Every time we posed that question, we received replies that I would paraphrase as, “Management doesn’t know what the hell they’re doing.” Some comments are much more colorful and emotional.

Let’s face it: A bad manager can make your job hell on earth.

Now, PCB designers are known to complain (I’m kidding, somewhat), but we also see this kind of comment from PCB fabricators, assembly providers, and suppliers. It turns out that a wide variety of technologists in this industry cast a jaundiced eye toward their management.

Naturally, we started this venture with another survey, this time to the subscribers of all three of our magazines; the results can be found on page of this issue. Open-ended questions often provide us with some of our best insights into our readers’ challenges, and this time was no exception.

Here is Question 1, followed by the top responses and the percentage of respondents who chose each.

What are the three most important traits and skill sets of a great leader today?

Ability to inspire others – 72.7%

Empowerment of employees – 47.7%

Integrity – 40.9%

Inspiration is the big winner here. Almost three-fourths of respondents want a leader who inspires them. They want to be inspired—they need to be inspired, or they’ll leave a job. That’s one of the most common points we hear regarding millennial staff.

To read this entire article, which appeared in the October 2016 issue of The PCB Design Magazine, click here.

Special Coverage

Real Time with… IPC APEX EXPO 2019 Show & Tell Magazine
This special I-Connect007 publication is a supplement to our other monthly magazines and brings you exclusive, in-depth coverage of the recent event.
We invite you to download your copy now.